Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

Writing, Translation, and Re-Constellation:
The Authorial Authority of Gayatri Spivak
and Matthew Arnold
Morgan Palmer
In her essay “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: A Woman’s Text
From the Third World,” Gayatri Spivak comments on the role of authorial
authority. She writes that, “in the mis-en-scène where the text persistently
rehearses itself, writer and reader are both upstaged. . . . In that scene of writing,
the authority of the author, however seductively down-to-earth, must be content
to stand in the wings” (Spivak, 1988: 268). Spivak introduces the concepts of
theater and staging because she does not believe that an author should act like a
director by imposing her own critical interpretation on her writing. When an
author provides criticism of her own text, she threatens to curtail the
interpretations of others. Although Spivak acknowledges that it is tempting to
grant unquestionable interpretive power to the author, she refuses to do so
herself. Instead she claims that the text itself should be the authority and
provides her own reading of Mahasweta Devi’s short story “Stanadayini” or
“Breast-Giver.” Thus, Spivak presents a conception of authorial influence that
allows for different interpretations of literature, and places the text in the
position of sole authority.
Similarly, Matthew Arnold addresses the roles of the translator, the critic,
and the text in his lectures “On Translating Homer.” Like Spivak, he believes
that the original text should be the ultimate authority. Since it is impossible to
determine for certain the original intents of the Homeric poets, there is no
danger that authorial influence will limit interpretations of the text. On the other
hand, the authority of the original comes into conflict with the power of the
translator. Arnold points out some of the problems that translators face as they
struggle to reconcile their own styles with the original Homer. He also addresses
the role of the critic, and claims that the only people fit to judge the quality of a
translation are those who can read the original Ancient Greek. Therefore, Arnold
sees himself as fit to evaluate translations of Homer, and claims that no
translator has preserved the quality of the original.
Spivak begins her essay by defining her own perspective on “Stanadayini.”
She identifies her role as both a historian and a teacher of literature. Spivak
writes that while the former must attempt to place the subaltern in a new subjectposition,
the latter must explain those subject-positions (Spivak, 1988: 241). In
131